To Dance With My Father Again
by MaidenStar
Summary: My tribute to the bravery and sacrifice of Remus and Tonks and the loss of their loved ones on the 2nd of May 1998, the day things changed forever. Told from the perspectives of Remus, Tonks, Teddy and Andromeda. Songfic, oneshot. Complete.


**A/N: As all Potterheads know today is the 2****nd**** May, the day that so many of our beloved characters died.**

**So, here's a little angsty songfic of sorts about Remus and Tonks, written as a way of remembering their sacrifice and the fact that they represent the sacrifices of all too many real lives lost in conflicts all around the world. Also a little tribute to Teddy and Andromeda, who had to live the rest of their lives without them. **

**I've played around with chronology again as usual =P. I didn't really want to, but for the first scene to work, Teddy needed to be older than he was (as he was only born a month before his parents died *sob*). So I'm afraid that's the only bit that doesn't fit into canon, I hope you guys don't mind too much. **

**The words are taken from the Luther Vandross song 'Dance With My Father' which I'm sure you're all familiar with and, if you're not, go listen it's beautiful and emotional. I've altered a few of the words to make them tie in with the story.**

**This is, as usual, un-beta'd so all mistakes are mine.**

To Dance With My Father Again

Two joyous shrieks filled the air simultaneously, surrounding Remus Lupin and causing him to throw back his head and give out a laugh that weaved amongst the exaltations of his wife and son. The three of them had been dancing slowly together but as soon as he had begun spinning the two of them around, trying not to tumble over, they had cried out excitedly. They clung together, laughing and happy, their spirits soaring.

The night air was cool and pleasant against his warm cheeks and as the spinning came to an end he pulled 'Dora closer with one arm and used the other ensure that his baby son was still securely on his shoulders, his tiny feet kicking excitedly, giggling all the while.

As the family moved slowly in circles around the little post-stamp garden beneath the new moon and twinkling stars 'Dora's hair, pink and shoulder-length and glowing, fanned out behind her. From the open window of the kitchen the radio could be heard, the song they had been dancing to had come to a natural end.

Remus kissed is wife's forehead and whispered,

"I love you, so much," fighting to conceal a familiar, all-consuming wave of emotion that seemed to take him over when he thought of the beauty of his wife and son; a tiny family unit tucked into an even tinier house in the middle of the village that had been Remus' childhood home.

They didn't have much. But they had each other. Always.

"I love you too," 'Dora replied and as they rocked in each other's arms Remus felt Teddy's little body droop slightly.

Tenderly taking his son from his shoulders and holding him to the opposite side of his chest that 'Dora was snuggled into, he noted that his hair was its customary shade of blue – he was happy.

And that was all Remus could wish for his son. Remus hadn't had proper health for over thirty years; he hadn't had wealth since he left school and found himself relatively unemployable. But with his friends, and now with his family, he had happiness.

And he was damned if he would let this war and one man's hatred and bloodlust get in the way of that. 'Dora put her arm over Remus' so they were both cradling their son together.

"Someone's tired," she smiled and, as if by way of reply, Teddy gave a cat-like yawn and rubbed his dark brown eyes with a tiny fist.

"Right then, that's enough dancing for one night," Remus decided with a reluctant sigh and prepared to go back inside.

"No wait!" 'Dora exclaimed and demanded that he didn't move until she got back, dashing inside. Remus chuckled and looked at Teddy who appeared to be slightly more wakeful following his mother's cry. The little boy reached out a hand, fingers spread as wide as he could manage and pressed it to the side of his father's face for a moment, staring with complete adoration at him. Remus knew that he didn't understand his lycanthropy, he didn't understand hate and prejudice, only love and care and that this was his father who would love him unconditionally and forever, no matter what.

Remus moved his son's hand away from his cheek and closer to his lips in order to press a kiss to it, causing Teddy to smile and press his hand to Remus'. Their palms together, Remus took in their differences in size. His already over-large hands looked gigantic in comparison to Teddy's.

"I've no idea where your mother's gone," he said to Teddy who promptly wrenched his eyes from their hands and up to Remus' face, listening with rapture. "But we'd better not go anywhere," he joked. "I've always been at her beck and call, her every whim. She could tell me to walk around the world three times and I'd probably ask when she wanted me to start. She could tell me to wait out here in the dark forever and I wouldn't even ask why," his son was watching him, but he knew he didn't understand. "You'll understand that someday, Teddy, I know you will."

They both looked towards the house as they heard 'Dora clatter out.

"I want to have pictures for his scrapbook," she explained, holding out a camera and Remus rolled his eyes slightly, reluctant as always to be in front of the camera. "You know this is important to me," she said unnecessarily and he nodded.

The three of them snuggled together and with a click and a flash the image was saved forever.

Half an hour later and they were in their shared bedroom, the other serving as a nursery and play room until their son was old enough to sleep on his own. Remus was tucking an already sleeping Teddy into his cot and kissed his cheek as he whispered,

"I love you Teddy, you and your mother are the best things that have ever happened to me. I'll never leave you again, I promise."

They never saw 'Dora's contented, beaming smile as she eavesdropped on her husband and son's one-sided conversation – it was the only proper thing to do really in her situation. She loved seeing the two of them together like that. Remus was a natural father, although he didn't always believe it

Content that his son was well content and sleeping soundly, Remus turned around to see that 'Dora was already in bed, wriggling round to try and get comfortable and as he went to join her he caught a glimpse of the wall clock and gave a start.

"Merlin, it's gone midnight already, no wonder he was tired!" Remus exclaimed. "Time really does fly when you're having fun,"

"Ooh, that means it's the 1st of May then," Dora said with a cheeky smile, giving him a playful pinch and punch on the arm and a sweet kiss on the lips. "It'll be his first summer soon," she added excitedly, but there was a hint of worry in her voice, "it feels like time really is flying."

"Yeah love, but we've got forever."

_Back when I was a child  
>Before life removed all the innocence<br>My father would lift me high  
>And dance with my mother and me and then<em>

_Spin me around till I fell asleep_  
><em>Then up the stairs he would carry me<em>  
><em>And I knew for sure<em>  
><em>I was loved<em>

Forever is a long time, Andromeda Tonks mused as she watched her grandson sit in his room as he so often did, looking over an incomplete scrapbook started by his parents eight years previously, the final photo taken one day before their untimely deaths. The little boy never cried or complained, he was obviously sad and lonely, but he smiled too when he looked at their happy faces and Andromeda knew that as he grew things would change and get easier and Hogwarts would give him greater happiness than he had right now. She turned sadly on her heel and left Teddy to his thoughts.

For as long as Teddy Lupin could remember he had known that most of his relatives were dead. His grandfather Ted, his namesake, had been killed because his parents had been Muggles, his other grandparents dead long before his father met his mother. And as for his parents, they had been killed on the 2nd May 1998 in the Final Battle against some people called Death Eaters. He knew that they didn't have to go to fight that day, but they did anyway. He sometimes asked his Gran if by fighting they had picked the Battle over him but he knew before she answered that they did not. They had been brave. And he was very proud that they were his parents. But sometimes he felt overwhelmingly sad, and those were the days when he went to see his Godfather. Harry Potter's parents had died when he was a baby too, killed because of the same wizard – Voldemort. He helped him feel better about himself when he felt alone.

But the thing that he most loved to do was to read the letters his parents had left him and look at the photos. One of his favourites was one of the three of them, himself as a tiny baby, between his two parents, his mother obviously holding the camera. They were all smiling and, on the back in a script that his Gran had assured him was his mother's, were the words:

_'01/05/98, the three of us in the garden after a little impromptu dancing'_

He knew that they had died 24 hours after this and to realise that they had been so happy with him, often stopped the tears that Teddy wanted to cry. Because when he screwed up his eyes tight (as if he wanted to morph, just like his mother had been able to) he could just dimly remember the sounds of his mother laughing and his father in a soft voice just like he always imagined, telling them that he loved them. He knew that they had all been in the kitchen that night because he could remember the smells of food, his parents had been playing with them, and when a certain song – that he couldn't remember – came on the radio his father had gathered his mother up in his arms, scooped Teddy onto his shoulders and had whirled them around the kitchen until they found the space to be too confined, Teddy assumed, because in the next piece of the memory, they were outside under the stars. His Gran didn't believe him when he told her this, but he didn't care. He knew it was true. Otherwise he would never have known that his father's voice was soft and low or that his mother's laugh was loud and full and ringing. But they were always the same in every dream of them he had, so it had to be true.

After they had danced all Teddy could remember was a flash and that was all he had of his parents forever. He assumed that was when his mother took the picture.

He wished he could meet them, just once, to see what they were like.

Harry had told him that he had seen his parents once in a mirror, once as teenagers in a memory and twice as spirits. He asked Harry what had happened to the mirror, maybe he could use it in the same way that Harry had once done, but Harry always told him he didn't know and that even if he did he wouldn't tell him because the cleverest man in the world, someone called Dumbledore, once told him that 'men wasted away in front of the mirror and went mad.'

Teddy always nodded pensively and then said that his father had been the cleverest man in the world and Harry always laughed and conceded that yes, his father had been the best teacher he'd ever had.

But it didn't stop him wishing he could meet his parents. And sometimes when he was alone in his room and a song he liked came on the radio he would pretend to dance with his parents, on his father's shoulders once again.

If he ever got to speak to them, he could ask him mum about how to be good at morphing, he could tell his dad that he didn't care that he was a werewolf, because apparently lots of other people had cared – it had bothered them a lot, and he could ask them to tell him more about how they met, because although it was all in their letters, he craved more information. He knew that his father was older than his mother, by quite a few years. He thought it was elven, but then it could have been as many as fifteen. It was not written down anywhere, in fact his Gran had told him so he would have to go and ask her again he thought, quitting his room and heading down the stairs, spinning round as he had once done on his father's shoulders.

_If I could get another chance  
>Another walk, another dance with him<br>I'd play a song that would never, ever end  
>How I'd love, love, love to dance with my father again<em>

As Andromeda turned away, she moved into her own bedroom, the one she had once shared with her husband and sank onto the bed, onto the spot in the middle. It was the place where a young Nymphadora would always wriggle into if she had had a nightmare or first thing in the morning on Christmas or birthdays, proffering presents and kisses and hugs.

She loved Teddy with every fibre of her body but whenever she looked at him, particularly when he screwed his face up to try and morph, all she could see was her Nymphadora. All she could see was the bright, happy little girl – her princess. And then, of course, when she thought of Nymphadora, she thought of Ted.

She had thought that nothing could have hurt in the way losing her beloved husband had hurt. But then she lost her daughter too. She had always been a calm, tidy, understated woman – the complete balance to tempestuous Bellatrix and flamboyant Narcissa and as much her parent's pet as the others until she had married a 'Mudblood'. She married for love, and the Black family never married for love. Unless of course there was a happy coincidence in which your intended also happened to be your soulmate.

Narcissa had been lucky.

Bellatrix hadn't.

But the latter was dead too now and although she saw more of Narcissa and her nephew Draco than she ever had in the past they were still anything but close.

She had no doubt that if it hadn't been for Teddy, she'd probably have died from the pain of her own broken heart.

The night Ted had died she had numbly walked outside, unaware that it was raining. She had screamed at the top of her voice and she had all but destroyed the neat order and tidiness of her home. Everything in there reminded her of Ted.

And then, not long after, Nymphadora had said she was pregnant and while Andromeda couldn't pretend she hadn't been shocked by her choice of husband she had grown to love Remus very much. At least, when she'd forgiven him for leaving her daughter that is. He treated Nymphadora well, he loved her and he reminded Andromeda very much of Ted – desperate for the approval of the family of the woman he loved, convinced he was not what her parents wanted and that he was not good enough.

She had broken down when she became a grandmother, the tears flowing freely when she had heard that it was Remus' idea to name their son for his maternal grandmother. It was an act of kindness and respect that she had prayed for from her daughter every night but had never dared asked for.

But now her daughter and her son-in-law were dead and she was left to raise another child in the aftermath of another war. She had had to teach Teddy about his parents and his grandfather when she could barely even think of them herself without crumpling to the nearest surface – sofa, floor, bed – and crying.

She didn't know when she got this weak. She had no hope of ever finding a love like Ted again, would never see her daughter, had no immediate family to call upon and hadn't had proper friends since before the war. She was a shadow of the woman she once was. She was in this alone.

But above all, she had so many regrets. She remembered how when Nymphadora had been Teddy's age, she had always been a daddy's girl. Her mother had been the one to lay down the law, Nymphadora pushed the boundaries, Andromeda told her off and Ted convinced their daughter to obey her mother and to give an apology. Ted was always the good guy.

There's always got to be a sterner parent and she was it. And by Merlin she and Nymphadora had had their arguments. But she had loved her daughter and her daughter had loved her back. She just wished she'd done all the things she'd promised to do when she was a kid. All those holidays, the summers she had gone to work to raise money for 'some time off next year' rather than just taking the time off then and there to take her little girl to the beach, all the adventures she had promised but never delivered. Yes, those were her biggest regrets.

She made the change when it came to Teddy, but it didn't salve the stinging in her heart.

She buried her head in the covers that smelt of family and home and she wept as quietly as possible, mindful of keeping Teddy away from her own sorrow, wishing she was as strong as she used to be.

_When I and my mother would disagree_  
><em>To get my way I would run from her to him<em>  
><em>He'd make me laugh just to comfort me, yeah, yeah<em>  
><em>Then finally make me do just what my mama said<em>

_Later that night when I was asleep_  
><em>He left a dollar under my sheet<em>  
><em>Never dreamed that he<em>  
><em>Would be gone from me<em>

_If I could steal one final glance  
>One final step, one final dance with him<br>I'd play a song that would never, ever end  
>'Cause I'd love, love, love to dance with my father again<em>

Teddy had found that his grandmother was not in the living room, the kitchen or the garden, which meant that she was in her bedroom. She didn't think he had caught on but he knew that that was where she went to be sad because she had lost three people, not two like him. He knew that was her sad place because _his_ room was _his_ sad place and he and his grandmother were very alike. Maybe he could go in and give her a hug and tell her some of the things Harry told him, that always seemed to make her smile.

Whenever he spoke to her about the time he danced with his parents she smiled wistfully and told him that his grandfather had danced with her in their living room like that once, when they were younger. And when Nymphadora – that was his mother – had been about his age and they had been at home alone, Nymphadora would stop her doing the chores and they would dance around the living room, the very living room in this house, and they would laugh and shout and sing at the top of their voices.

But that was many, many years ago she told him, her eyes dull and distant.

But just as he was about to walk into her room, he heard a noise that made him freeze. It was a noise he had thought he heard on the nights when he woke up from a nightmare. Even at eight, he felt far too old to be bother his grandmother with such silly things as nightmares about his parents being hurt in the Battle, so he would just lie awake and hum to himself, always a lullaby he remembered his grandmother and his mother singing to him. But sometimes as he was drifting off to sleep again he imagined he heard a noise. It sounded like crying, but it was the most pained, anguished crying he had ever heard.

And that was what he could hear right now, coming from outside his grandmother's room. He thought he had imagined it, he thought it was all part of the nightmare. But he realised now, that it was the sound of his Gran – the strong, kind woman who took care of him, the woman who had lost so many people. The woman he had never, ever seen cry.

_Sometimes I'd listen outside her door_  
><em>And I'd hear her, mama cryin' for him<em>  
><em>I pray for her even more than me<em>  
><em>I pray for her even more than me<em>

Teddy ran back to his room and pushed his head underneath his pillows so as to drown out that terrible, pained sound and tears ran down his face.

It wasn't fair! He wanted his mum and he wanted his dad. Why did they have to be gone? Why couldn't someone invent a spell to bring them back? Maybe if he tried hard enough at Hogwarts, he could bring them back. And if he did that, he'd bring back his grandfather too, so his Gran could be happy again, and he'd bring back Harry's parents because he loved his Godfather a lot. And then, he'd destroy the magic and never tell anyone about it.

And then, he could dance with his father and mother again. And so could his Gran.

_I know I'm praying for much too much_  
><em>But could you send back the only ones we loved<em>  
><em>I know you don't do it usually<em>  
><em>But Lord, I'm dying to dance with my father again<em>

Nymphadora Lupin was rushing around the corridors of Hogwarts, searching for her husband, tears blinding her vision.

_Pleasepleasepleaseplease._

He couldn't be dead. Oh God he couldn't be dead. But in her heart she could feel it. Something had gone out and she knew.

But still she screamed out loud when she saw his body and tumbled over, shaking his shoulders and ordering him to wake up. She banged her fists against his chest and buried her face into his robes. But he wouldn't wake. His eyes were shut and his face was slack. People said it was like their loved ones were sleeping when they died and partly this could be true, but this wasn't her husband, her Remus. His face was slacker, emptier.

Someone laughed behind her and somewhere, in another life, she remembered what laughter was. She remembered how it felt.

She turned to see her aunt, Bellatrix Lestrange and though she scrabbled for her discarded wand she could not dodge the Cruciatus Curse that was sent her way.

And yes, somewhere in her it hurt. Each and every curse that hit her hurt until she found herself upon the ground, weak and empty and trembling. But it didn't hurt as much as losing him.

She knew she was going to die. She let her head find his chest and pretended they were asleep together. She closed her eyes and she remembered her son and her mother and she felt an overwhelming sense of guilt.

"_I'm sorry Teddy," _she whispered_, "we never wanted to leave you"._

But Bellatrix wanted to see the effect and strength of her magic and she dragged her niece upwards to her feet – this was a conquest she had longed for since the younger woman had escaped her two years ago – she was damn well going to enjoy it.

_"Avada Kedavra!"_

As her aunt's Killing Curse hit her she felt herself giving up and her body went limp and she was falling.

Nymphadora Tonks was dying and her body was about to hit the ground with a sickening thud. But as her last breath left her mouth and the warmth left her skin, she came to believe that she was outside, cold because of the cool of the night, breathless from laughter. She was not falling but spinning. She was dancing with her husband and son. Forever.

_Every night I fall asleep  
>And this is all I ever dream.<em>

* * *

><p><strong>AN: Well that's it. **

**I hope you enjoyed, if it's possible to enjoy angst. **

**Please leave me a review letting me know what you think.**

**Much love to all my readers and reviewers as usual ^^.**


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